


Meet Me In Paris

by lettersbyelise



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Henry Speaks French, Hotel Sex, Kissing, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, POV First Person, POV Henry, Paris (City), Pining, Secret Relationship, Sleeping Together, all the kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:02:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersbyelise/pseuds/lettersbyelise
Summary: In which Henry gets out of his Berlin obligations, meets Alex in Paris instead, and ends up spending the night.





	Meet Me In Paris

**Author's Note:**

> I loved _Red White and Royal Blue_ so much, I knew I wanted to write fic for it before I'd even finished the book.
> 
> This ficlet is a retelling of Henry and Alex's Paris meetup at the beginning of chapter seven - just because I really, really wanted to write something from Henry's point of view.
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful beta, @coriesocks, and to the lovely people of Tumblr who left me _'ashgdhfghqfghjq'_ and _'I can't wait to read this'_ messages when I was posting little teasers there <3

_Le Progrès,_ all gilded mouldings and stained-glass mirrors and floor-to-ceiling bay windows overlooking a quaint, cobbled street corner of Montmartre, looks like the kind of cafe that was built to be photographed. So I can pretend the small battalion of photographers and paparazzi stationed at the front are here for the photogenic view, rather than the scheduled meeting of the young, beautiful offspring of two of the world’s most powerful nations.

Of course that's where Alex would suggest we meet. Attention-seeking twat. Although he looks positively dazzling in his casual jeans and jacket thrown over a open-collared shirt, so he’s instantly forgiven. I see him and a big, stupid grin threatens to take over my face. So un-royal like. I catch myself before it happens, though, and plaster my public relations face on — chin lifted high and a polite, measured smile that never quite reaches my eyes — and take a step forward to shake Alex's hand under the flashes of thirty hungry cameras.

“Hello,” I tell him, and our handshake lingers a second too long before I let go, my forefinger brushing his palm as it retreats.

“Hey, _best friend,”_ Alex grins, cheeky. I’m torn between wanting to punch him, and wanting to walk him back into the café’s loo by the collar of his shirt and maul his face.

“Shall we get lunch, then?” I ask jovially, something for the reporters to recount when they write their ridiculous articles.

Lunch is both an indescribable joy and a bottomless torture. I haven't seen Alex in weeks. The things he promised he'd do to me — that he'd let me do to him — if I could get out of my Berlin obligations and meet him in Paris are still whirling in my head. They've been whirling in my head for days. I can't sleep (nothing new). I can't focus on what’s being said in meetings, and it shows: my brother’s mouth becomes a thin, disapproving line every time he looks at me. I wonder how true to his word Alex will be, and how much of his sweet, haunting, debauched words were to bait me out of my royal commitments. Either way, I am weak. And so I'm here, barely able to resist reaching out and covering Alex’s hand with mine across the table, every nerve in my body screaming that lunch is quite unnecessary when I could be on my knees, hands on the back of Alex's thighs, nipping the hot skin between hip and cock and drinking in the obscene terms of endearment he never fails to spill in those moments.

I try to push all thoughts of Alex shivering against me out of my mind for now, lest the cameras — relentlessly flashing away, determined to commit every second of this summit meeting to photographs — catch the insidious flush creeping up my neck. I focus on Alex’s jolly act. The bastard does look the part of a prince’s best friend. He pours me some more Bourgogne, asking me about what I’ve been up to… as though he didn’t know, as though we weren’t linked, interconnected in every possible way — texts, emails, late night FaceTime sessions, and blink-or-you-miss-them pics on Snapchat — our conversations tying us closer together as the days and nights went by, like meandering threads around our ankles, our fingers, our hearts. I give him the exact same answer that I gave him yesterday. I remember the words, because I said them just before he whispered in his phone, straight into the shell of my ear, that he missed me, that he wanted me naked under him tomorrow. He grins in response, just a hint of heat in it. I lean closer — thank God for tiny café tables — and I say under my breath, the polite, royal smile never leaving my face, “I think I’m done with lunch. How much longer do we have to carry on with this charade?”

He tilts his head back and laughs, open and photogenic. More cameras flash, the lights flicking over his olive skin and flushed neck. “Oh, sweetheart,” he looks at me, eyes crinkled with a sharp-edged grin that’s not entirely for the reporters’ sake, “If you’d be so kind as to have your wicked way with me now.”

*

I assumed Alex stayed somewhere near the US Embassy. The _Crillon,_ perhaps. I should know better than to assume all Americans are ostentatious prats. Instead, he instructs me to meet him twenty minutes after he leaves, with directions to an inconspicuous little hotel up the hill of Montmartre. When I get there, it’s a small, family-run affair: just a few delicately decorated rooms overlooking a garden. Beyond the line of trees and fragrant honeysuckle in bloom, the hotel windows open on a sea of slate Parisian roofs for as far as the eye can see. I look around when Alex lets me in. “This is significantly less flashy than I expected,” I have time to comment, before he grabs me by the lapels of my jacket, unceremoniously rams me against the closed door, and shuts me up by crushing his mouth to mine.

We kiss, my hands in his hair, his tongue against mine, furious and breathless. There’s something so direct, so straightforward about the way Alex Claremont-Diaz kisses. It’s like being kissed by his entire bloody wholehearted personality. It’s overwhelming. I close my fist in his curls to steady myself and he grunts like he can’t get enough. He grabs at me, his hands palming my shoulder blades, sliding down my ribs. They come to rest on the dip of my waist and he melts against me, sighs in my mouth like he’s finally home.

He pulls back, his mouth hovering a breath away from mine. I tighten my hands in his hair.

“Turn around,” I tell him. Not _tell_ him — it’s an order. I try to inject as much royal authority as I can in my tone. I’m not so drunk that I don’t know exactly what I’m doing. It works, by the looks of it: Alex melts against me some more — God, it works every time, doesn’t it? — then nods and pivots us around until his back is flat against the door and I’m standing in front of him.

Kissing him on the mouth or on… other places, is almost the same kind of experience. Alex just gives himself over to the feeling, heartbreakingly candid in the way he lets his body respond to my kisses, to my hands on his belt, on the zip of his jeans. I take him in my mouth, slow and wet. His face is so open, his lips so obscene, his eyes so dark, shadowed by those fucking eyelashes.

I would fall for him in an instant, if I wasn’t on the floor already. If I hadn’t fallen years ago.

Later, I’m lying in bed, my clothes and Alex’s on a heap by the bedside table. Alex has spread my legs open and settled between them, his breath ghosting on the wet tip of my cock — the tease — and his thumb rubbing small, unbearable circles against the rim of my arse. He pushes in, experimentally, and I arch off the mattress, fisting the sheets. I let out a strangled, embarrassing sound. When I look back at him, his smug grin is gone, replaced by an intent sort of wonder. “Henry,” he says, softer than I’m used to hearing him. I don’t speak. I just nod — and he pushes a little deeper, and closes his gorgeous lips around me.

*

Alex doesn’t tell me it would be preferable that I leave, and I don’t notice when I fall asleep.

*

I wake up first.

I imagined I would. I imagined it a lot. I thought about it, all the times when out of breath and grinning and stupidly in love after a long late-night conversation with Alex, I told myself a nice little bedtime story. The story of a prince, very much in love with another, who woke up every morning and watched his beloved for a few, precious, golden minutes before the other prince opened his eyes. For a few half-awake moments, that is exactly what I do.

The light of dawn through the net curtains is warm and cristallin, the only sound the cheerful chirps of sparrows in the tree outside our window and Alex’s soft snores, filtering from under the white sheet next to me. With careful fingers, I lift it and watch him. Something big and painful swells inside my rib cage. Alex was right. This… _This_ is the reason why we don’t sleep together. I’ve made the sleeping lover fantasy a reality, and now I have to live with the knowledge of how Alex looks when he’s asleep — the moving softness of his face divested of his usual restlessness and sunny grin, his hand curled into a loose fist next to his cheek on the pillow.

He stirs, then blinks, then sees me and smiles.

“Hey,” he whispers, his eyes crinkling with a grin that makes me ache. I hold him down and kiss him full on the mouth. “Morning breath!” he laughs, nose wrinkling, and pushes me off him, only to wrap his arms around my neck and bring me back on top of him a second later.

He calls room service when both of us and the sheets are decent again. I’ve put on my boxers and his shirt from yesterday, and the look he gives me when he passes the bed to open the door makes me shiver. He settles the tray between us on the mattress and we take turns biting into juicy apricot tartlets and drinking tea from the same cup. It’s all very domestic, and we fall into it with terrifyingly natural ease. I refrain from mentioning it. I’m not sure it isn’t bad form, bringing up how couple-y breakfast with one’s illicit lover feels. Room service comes with today’s issue of _Le Monde,_ and Alex asks me to read it. I do, first in English — translating as I read — then in its original language. “You sexy French-speaking bastard,” Alex growls before ripping the newspaper from my hands and climbing in my lap. He undoes the buttons of his own shirt on me, slides it off my shoulders, trailing wet, Earl Grey scented kisses down my neck, my shoulders, my chest. “Is there anything you _cannot_ do?” His voice trembles, like air on overheated pavement. I slide my hand around the back of his neck, let him push my boxers down and suck me off one last time.

*

I sneak off when he’s in the shower. There’s no point in lingering goodbyes; we will be texting back and forth again in a matter of hours. There’s no point in wanting to touch his face one more time — it’s a thirst I gave up quenching from the first time I put my hands on him. I’m about to leave, anyway. I go to the bedside table, take my phone and check my messages. There’s the thread of Alex’s and my last email exchange —

 

> _I’ve been thinking about your mouth on me all week, and I was hoping I’d see you in Paris so I could put it to use._
> 
> _I was also thinking you might know how to pick French cheeses. Not my area of expertise._

Underneath, Alex had signed,

 

> _First Son of Cheese Shopping and Blowjobs._

I snort. Indeed. Well, except for the cheese shopping.

Feeling cheeky and strangely elated, I pick up a pen and scribble on the notepad by the bed, _Fromagerie Nicole Barthélémy._ It would be rude, wouldn’t it, to only fulfil half of my secret lover’s Parisian dreams.

Jacket in hand, I walk past the bathroom door. The shower is running, and I can hear Alex singing a muffled version of what can only be _La Vie En Rose._ _When he takes me in his arms, he speaks to me so softly, and I see life in pink,_ I hum along with him. I can’t help the wry half-smile on my face. _That’s the man I chose to love._

And, careful not to disturb his song, I close the door behind me.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The quoted text above comes from Henry and Alex's email exchange at the end of Chapter six and belongs to Casey McQuinston.
> 
> *
> 
> This is my first time branching out of Drarry... Kudos and comments are welcome (and encouraging ;))!
> 
> Come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lettersbyelise)!


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